"Stop right there!"
I freeze.
He stares at me. I watch him try to make sense of the sheer absurdity of the situation. I get his confusion—it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, either. It certainly wasn't how I envisioned my wedding day going.
"The hell is this?" he shouts back toward his fellow soldiers on the porch. "There's a—there's awomanout here. In a wedding dress."
Another man comes out onto the porch. Then a third. Exactly like I said. A crazy bride is a thing you stop and look at, no matter who or where you are.
And that's precisely what we needed to happen. Every second they look at me is a second they don't look at the trees behind them.
"I'm here for Afon Satyrin," I call out. "He's supposed to be getting married today. To me."
The men look at each other.
"She's nuts," one of them declares.
"Go tell Reznik," another mutters.
The first one starts backing toward the lodge door, not lowering his rifle, keeping it on me. I keep walking, slow, one careful step at a time, watching his trigger finger, my heart going so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
Inside, Afon hears it too.
I don't know that right now, of course. I won't find out until later how it went, this part I couldn't see. The fist driving into his kidney, his head snapping back, blood in his mouth. Reznik lounging on his throne by the fire, sipping from a glass, telling his men to do it slow.
And then a man bursting through the front door saying there's a woman outside in a wedding dress asking for him.
And Afon, who came up that mountain to die, who left his ring on my pillow, who said his goodbyes and meant them, lifting his swelling, bleeding head and feeling the bottom drop out of his stomach.
Because there's only one woman in the world that could be.
And she was supposed to be a few hours south, safe.
The first shot doesn't come from the front.
It comes from the back, from the woods. A single crack that splits the cold air.
And then the world comes apart.
The men on the porch spin toward the sound. The young one with the rifle on me whirls, and for one second, his back is to me.
That's all the time the figure that comes out of the tree line on my right needs. I don't even see him until his damage is done. The young man goes down and doesn't get up.
"Caroline, down!" somebody roars. Lukas's voice, somewhere close.
I drop into the snow. The vest knocks the wind out of me.
Above me, the air fills with noise. Gunfire, men shouting, the heavy thud of bodies moving fast through deep snow. I press my cheek to the cold ground and I do exactly what I was told—I stay down, I make myself small, and I don't move.
It doesn't last long. A burst here, a shout there, a man crying out, then cut short. Boots pounding the porch. Glass breaking. The deep boom of a shotgun from inside.
Then less.
Less.
Less.
Until…
